Oz coroner most sincerely dead

Raabe appointed a Shawnee County coroner to ink Wicked Witch's 'official' Kansas death certificate

Meinhardt Reinhart, right, who played Munchkinland's coroner in the 1939 MGM musical, "The Wizard of Oz," talks about the film as two other former Munchkins, Mickey Carroll, left, and Karl Slover, look on at an Oct. 14, 2005, news conference at the first OZtoberFest in Wamego. Reinhardt died Friday.

Meinhardt Raabe signs an official Kansas death certificate for the Wicked Witch of the East on Oct. 14, 2005, in Wamego. The Shawnee County Commission appointed Raabe, who died Friday, a special deputy coroner to officially register the witch's death with the state.

When Meinhardt Raabe, who as the coroner in the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz" declared the Wicked Witch of the East "really most sincerely dead," died Friday in Florida, it wasn't only Munchkinland that lost a former official. So, too, did Shawnee County.

In October 2005 for the first OZtoberFest in Wamego, the Shawnee County Commission on a unanimous vote appointed Raabe a special deputy coroner for the sole purpose of clearing up a 67-year-old paperwork oversight.

Although Raabe as the coroner sang in the classic MGM movie musical — "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead" — and held the scroll of a death certificate in his hand, no such document was ever officially filed with the Office of Vital Statistics in Topeka.

Shawnee County coroner Erik Mitchell, who was an acquaintance of Raabe, and deputy coroner Donald Pojman, whose then-9-year-old daughter Krista was playing the coroner in a stage production of "The Wizard of Oz" at Wamego's Columbian Theatre, took advantage of Raabe's appearance at the first OZtoberFest to make things right.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Pojman explained that although the actual death of the Wicked Witch of the East occurred in Oz, Kansas was the proper venue for filing the death certificate since jurisdiction lies where the incident causing the death occurred. And it was in black-and-white Kansas not Technicolor Oz where the tornado picked up Dorothy's house before dropping it on the witch, snuffing out all but her ruby slippers.

On the Kansas death certificate Pojman wrote under cause of death, "Reduced to just a stitch, due to kitchen took a snitch, due to house began to pitch, due to Kansas cyclone." "Freak of nature" was the manner of injury, "flattened spirit" was the nature of injury, and "where the goblins go" was the place of burial, cremation or removal.

Raabe cheerfully signed the official document at a news conference on the stage of the Columbian Theatre where he and a handful of the other remaining actors who played Munchkins signed autographs and met fans. With Raabe's death, there are only five surviving little people among the 124 Munchkins in the movie.

Cindy Bosnyak, Raabe's caregiver, told The Associated Press that the 94-year-old died Friday morning at a hospital in Orange Park, Fla., where he was taken after collapsing from a heart attack at his retirement community.

"He had a headful of hair at 94, and he remembered everything everyday," Bosnyak said. "To me he was a walking history book, very alert."

"The Wizard of Oz" was the only movie the 4-foot-7 Raabe made, but the University of Wisconsin graduate who later earned a master of business administration degree from Drexel University spent 30 years touring the country in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile promoting hot dogs as "Little Oscar, the World's Smallest Chef."

While his health permitted him to do so, Raabe enjoyed going to Oz nostalgia events, such as Wamego's OZtoberFest, and getting fan mail.